the importance of rules in online communities

Since I've started in this module the importance of rules and etiquette in online communities has become aparant even in my own limited experience. This history of online etiquette seems to be around since the very birth of the chatroom, with people being booted off a server for writing all caps, (shouting). As would be the case in second life if the owner of whosever land didnt take kindly to shouting they could exit you from their property. While theese things may be more manners, their importance lies in the fact that due to the nature of the internet, rules and etiquette being followed make sure that whatever online experience your trying to enjoy, that it doesn't turn out to be a total mess.

Particularly in the case of second life, which since it is a fictional, virtual world it requires its users to use its capabilities " properly". Take for instance my experience with Trill Zapatero of the four bridges project. Trill told me that the group was facing problems, since the group was open to anyone, due it's humanitarian nature, anyone could create a build of any size in the site. This resulted in some people taking total advantage and creating very large builds that cause lagging within the four bridges complex. So really, the heads of the project have a catch 22 between having a free and open medium for anyone to enjoy, that was bveing slowly hampered by people abusing that system, so the free and open medium would be lost if the bridges project started excluding people creating large builds or being more selective about who is allowed to be a member of the project.

So that would be where the importance of etiquette comes in because there is no offical rule, where rules come in are in places like wikipedia. Wikipedia awhile ago got rid of the trivia section at the end of it's articles through some descion that they weren't appropriate for an encyclopedia, so that became a rule. This rule was followed and it is extremely difficult to see any article on wikipedia that hasn't been " cleaned up" by this rule. So the importance of this rule was protect the "integrity" of the online encyclopedia, so it didn't become just like any of the other million online enclyopedias out there. If there were no rules, wikipedia is just the knid of website that could degenerate into total mess.

A good example of how not to enforce any rules and completely ruin your website would be the formally popular social networking website bebo. Looking back on bebo it's hard to imagine a website where the same things could of been possible that went on there, anybody no matter who they were could comment on anything anyone else had on their page regardless of friendship status, bebo had multiple sex groups and groups where members could advertise their msn adresses and there was no limit to the amount of friends someone could have. All theese things are much better controled on facebook and twitter, which seem to have the poetential to be around alot longer than bebo as long as one doesn't over take the other. So bascially rules ensure that online communties do not become a total messes.